Birthday Girl
by HeartsandEyesDelight
Summary: "Despite her abject dislike for him and two-thirds of his friends, her friends had solicited the Marauders to orchestrate Lily Evans' seventeenth birthday party, and the results were… Well, brilliant, if he did say so himself." One-shot.


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, etc.

A/N: First time posting in this fandom, so reviews are appreciated! Hope you enjoy!

* * *

"Hey, Hey, _Potter_!" She giggled and then snorted, rocking unsteadily on the balls of her feet. "Alright, Potter?"

The Potter in question—James Potter—turned to look the very intoxicated birthday girl, trying and failing to fight back his smirk. Despite her abject dislike for him and two-thirds of his mates, her friends had solicited the Marauders to orchestrate Lily Evans' seventeenth birthday party, and the results were… Well, brilliant, if he did say so himself.

And they weren't brilliant merely because the girl he'd been moderately obsessed with for the past two years was drunk and attempting to flirt with him, albeit in an attempt to mock his own attempts to flirt with her, although that was turning out to be the highlight of his night. No, it had been one of the best parties the Marauders had ever thrown, in part because, now that Sirius was of age, they had a much easier time getting ahold of Firewhiskey when necessary.

Well, he supposed that part was, in part, related to Lily. She would not have been nearly so intoxicated if they'd been handing out butter beer in honor of her birthday.

"I'm alright. How's the birthday girl?"

She snorted another laugh, and her rocking abruptly stopped, her landing tipping her far to one side so that she had to grab onto the arm of a sofa to keep herself from colliding with the floor. "Hey, Potter, go out with me?" She laughed again, as if this were hilarious, and James ruffled his hair in a movement that was mixed amusement and agitation. He liked that she was speaking to him—and not screaming—and there was nothing more attractive than her laugh, even when it was a bit drunken and unseemly, but she was making a mockery of years' worth of honest, fervent, heart-felt entreaties.

It wasn't his fault if he turned into the world's biggest prat when she was around; she made him nervous. She made his palms clammy and his heart race and his mouth go dry. It was impossible to keep one's cool and know the right things to say when your body was betraying you like that.

But she was drunk, and couldn't really be held responsible for her words right now, so he gave her his best grin and a roguish wink. "I knew you'd come around sooner or later. Next Hogsmeade?"

She let out a shrieking laugh that, even to James' biased ears, was rather unattractive, and fell onto the nearest couch, her t-shirt rising up and showing off a tiny, tantalizing little strip of stomach. He eyed it nervously, feeling simultaneously guilty and overwhelmingly curious. Was it taking advantage, to let his eyes caress the peachy pale skin just above her jeans in search of errant freckles? He could not begin to explain how many restless nights he'd spent, sleep evading him, while he wondered where exactly—and how heavily—she had freckles on her petite, rounded little body.

He glanced around the room in an attempt to distract himself.

The party _had_been one of the best they'd ever thrown, but it was dwindling now. Most people had drifted off to bed or, at least, other bed-related activities, his best mate included. Peter had passed out and was snoring loudly on the floor near the girls' staircase, and Remus was attempting to flirt with Celyn Rees, a fifth year girl, while her older sister, Mabyn, a girl in their year, hovered like a hawk, as if she thought shy Remus Lupin would take advantage.

Well… Maybe she wasn't entirely wrong. Remus would never take advantage of a willing girl, let alone an unwilling or impaired one, but neither was he the sweet, shy boy that everyone seemed to think he was.

There were a couple other stragglers; Indira and Mary, both sixth year girls, were flirting with several of the seventh year guys in a far corner, by the window, and Frank Longbottom and Alice Prewett were occupying one of the oversized chairs by the fire, though by the looks of it, they would shortly be retreating up to his dorm. Lily's sidekick, Ailis, was nowhere to be found, but that made sense. She might approach Remus to help her throw Lily a party, but it wasn't really her thing. She'd likely left Lily with Mabyn to enjoy herself once things had gotten a bit interesting and gone on up to their room. But Mabyn was busy babysitting her not-remotely-intoxicated kid sister, which left Lily to…

Well, to him.

For a moment, he reflected that Lily's friends were a bit cavalier with her safety. Certainly, he wouldn't take advantage of the poor girl, but that didn't mean every bloke was as decent as he was. There had been people from all the houses in attendance—although Slytherins were few and far between—and students ranging from fourth to seventh years. _Anyone_could be here, right now, beside his Lily, while she laughed herself silly and bared that tempting little sliver of skin.

With a sigh, he seated himself on the far end of the couch, which was the only open place—her upper body down to her delicious little arse was sprawled across two of the cushions, her long legs hooked over the arm of the couch, her darkly scarlet locks fanned out behind her head in a vibrant halo. "Some friends you've got, Evans."

She looked up at him, and offered a smile. It was just coherent enough that, had her eyes been a bit more focused, he would have believed her merely tipsy, and still fully in control. But no—he had experience with all stages of intoxication, and Lily was at least two—probably three—sheets to the wind. Tonight might have been fantastic, but tomorrow morning would be terrible.

"Some friends _you've_got. Potter." She snorted her laughter at his last name again, and tilted her head back until she could see him fully without turning her head to either side. It wasn't really comfortable, being surveyed through the top of her eyes like that, but her lifted chin pulled her back into a slight arch that was nothing short of eye-capturing.

He cleared his throat, looking away. "What's wrong with my friends? They haven't left _me_pissed and vulnerable on my birthday."

She snorted another laugh. "No, but you've left… Peter… pissed and vulnerable on his—_my_—birthday."

James glanced guiltily at his friend, sprawled in front of the girls' staircase, but then dismissed her accusation. If it had been Sirius there, his hair sleek and shiny and _lying flat_, a tight Muggle t-shirt stretched over a perfect physique he never had to work for, while James spent hours on the pitch, working his arse off…

He was getting away from his point, which was: No one was going to take advantage of Peter. Sirius would have to worry about girls disrobing him while he lay there vulnerable—and likely a few blokes as well—and even Remus, James would have rescued, simply because he might roll to and fro in the night, and if _his_shirt were to ride up, it would reveal scars Remus would have no way to explain. But Peter… He was presently a great, snoring lump, and it would only be a matter of time before he started drooling on himself.

"Peter's fine. It's his own fault for drinking so much."

She blinked blearily up at him, and shook her head. "You're such a prat, Potter."

Normally her insults offended him—though of course he never showed it—but this one was delivered perfunctorily, without any heat; he smiled and looped a finger through one of the auburn curls clashing so terribly right now with the crimson couch it was laid out upon. He'd never gotten to touch her hair before; it was softer than he imagined, despite the tangled curls, and he was certain he could smell something—vanilla, maybe—wafting up to him as soon as he touched it.

"I know. Have you had a good birthday, then?"

She frowned then, her pretty red eyebrows bending down, putting a crease between them, just above her turned up nose. "What is it with guys-like-you, anyway?"

He frowned too, wondering at the word—because she had said it all as if it were a single word—and at the direction of her question. "I… I'm sorry?"

"Mabyn says it's all men. Ailis agrees; testosterone, you know?" He did not know, as a matter of fact, what on earth 'testosterone' might be, except that he was pretty sure it sounded like she was talking about bits—reinforced by the fact that they were talking about 'all men'. "But that's not on. If I told Remus to bugger off, I wouldn't see him for a month. And! When I did run into him, at… I don't know, the breakfast table, he'd _apologize_, saying he knows how much I like French Toast."

James blinked. Several times. "…French toast?"

"Exactly! So why is it, exactly, that guys-like-you can't take a hint?"

He straightened up, looking her more fully in the face—although she was upside down, from this angle—and narrowed his eyes, as if that would improve comprehension. "Lily… You're going to have to spell this out for me, love. I'm not following."

"That! Right there! Do you think Remus would call me 'love' if I'd told him to bugger off?!"

"…I don't think Remus would call you 'love' regardless. He's not big on pet names."

Lily rolled her eyes. "You're missing the point entirely. You both say you love me, but do either of you know that French Toast is my favorite breakfast? Do either of you even care?"

James ran an agitated hand through his hair, telling himself that he _must_be making this more difficult than it actually was, because not even Sirius was this incoherent when he was drunk. The implications against his best mate, too, struck him as off—and not only because Lily had just said that Remus did, in fact, know about her affinity for French Toast. "Who are you talking about? Who is 'either' of us?"

"Severus, of course! You're both exactly the same, really; giant, testosterone-y prats."

This time, the word sounded more like a pasta dish, with the notable exception that it still made him think of bollocks. More importantly, however, was the introduction of Snivellus. He had not been mentioned between himself and Lily—not that they frequently had long, in-depth conversations, mind—since Lily's refusal to accept James' apology on the train ride back to King's Cross at the end of fifth year.

James walked himself back through the conversation in his head. To Lily, apparently, he and Snape were exactly the same in that they claimed to love her, and yet were unaware of her fondness for French Toast. He supposed that that's what she'd meant, referencing 'guys-like-you'. …What had Lily said about Remus? If she'd told him to bugger off, she wouldn't see him for a month, and then at the breakfast table, when he'd apologize, because he did know she liked French Toast. In context, he figured she might be making a point—that Remus would respect her wishes to an extreme, while James, having been told to bugger off innumerable times by the girl beside him, had never done so.

"Sni—Snape won't leave you alone?"

"You'd think you would have the decency to leave me be on my only seventeenth birthday, wouldn't you? Do you know that the pair of you got me nearly identical gifts? …Pathetic."

James frowned; he'd spent weeks scouring his Mum's magazines over Christmas hols, and brought many of them back to school with him to continue, enduring endless teasing from his fellow Marauders in the process, all in an effort to find Lily a perfect gift for her coming-of-age. It was traditional to give wizards a watch, and witches a bracelet, and while James' instinct had told him that Lily would reject the notion that a witch should get something pretty while a wizard should get something useful, he also thought that she'd deserved to be a part of a Wizarding tradition; Muggleborn or not, this was her world now, and he knew that people made her feel like an outsider, sometimes.

And it wasn't like she couldn't just cast a tempus charm if she ever found herself desperately lacking a timepiece.

So he'd gotten her a delicate little gold bracelet that his mother told him was tasteful but young, and which he had admired all-too-frequently in the few weeks' lead up to her birthday, checking to make sure he still had it at two in the morning, making detours into secret passageways between classes just to sneak another look at it and reassure himself that yes, it was pretty, and yes, Lily would like it.

Apparently not.

He ruffled his hair again, and cleared his throat, trying not to let hurt or anger slip into his voice. "He bought you a bracelet as well?"

"Mmm," she said, and he glanced at her to realize that her eyes were closed. The alcohol was finally catching up with her, and it seemed that her anger was tiring with her. "Not as nice as yours, of course, but comparatively it's like…" She stopped, apparently unable to come up with a comparison, and shook her head. "Well, more, anyway."

This statement wasn't nearly as confusing as the French Toast, or maybe he'd finally wrapped his head around pissed-Lily-speak. Snape doesn't have the money the Potter's do, therefore his shitty gift means more than James' nice one, because James came by it easily. Only if she knew how much thought he'd put into it and how much taunting he'd endured and how much stress it had caused, she might not think it so easy for him.

He let his gaze slip over her face—the point of her chin, the curve of her cheeks, the brown-sugar dusting of freckles on her nose. He wished he had the words, sometimes, to explain the way he aches when he looks at her. It's almost like how you feel around a dementor, without the rush of painful memories—the squeezing, draining feeling of a heart pulled to its breaking point, pushed just one beat too far.

"…It's traditional, you know, to get a witch a bracelet when she comes of age. We probably both assumed your parents wouldn't know that."

Great, now he and Snivellus were a 'we'. Greasy git.

"Mmm," she said again, and let her eyes flutter open. "It's gotta be the testosterone." He frowned, having no answer to that, but she was apparently not finished, for a moment later she was speaking again. "I just don't know why neither of you can leave me the bloody hell alone. How many times does a girl have to say 'sod off' before you take a hint? _Oh, Lily, we're both so in love with you, but we don't know enough about you to even get you a gift you'd like._"

He knew she was drunk, and he had no right to be offended that she'd lowered her voice and, apparently, attempted to imitate both Snivelly and himself simultaneously. But it wasn't exactly a fair comparison, was it?

"Hold on. That's not… Lily, he was your best mate for years! I can't even get you to give me the time of day! You can be angry if he doesn't know your jewelry preferences, or whatever, but how is that fair for me? I've never been given half a chance to learn it about you! You're too busy tossing your hair and calling me names to actually let me get to know you!"

Her eyes snapped open wide, and she looked angry, but her mouth was opening and closing wordlessly. James didn't know if it was from shock or the alcohol slowing her down, but it took her several long seconds to respond.

"I don't… but you… You've never actually asked me… you know… _nicely_. It's always a big… big… thing! So everyone can watch you mess with your hair and smile all over the place and say…say… things! And then everyone talks about 'Poor James Potter' and how that nasty Lily Evans has shot him down again, and all the girls will swoon and all the boys look at me like I'm a beast, and you get the best of both worlds, don't you? You don't have to worry about me finding anyone else while you dally about, being Hogwarts' biggest tart! You never pull me aside for a quiet word, or ask me privately to study with you; no, it's always shouting about Hogsmeade on non-Hogsmeade weekends and rude suggestions about the Astronomy tower." She snorted then, in absolute frustration. "Because everyone knows the way to a girl's heart is through her tattered reputation!"

James didn't know what to say to that. In fact, he sat for several minutes, his face hot and his hands no longer twirling her hair, but lying heavy and uncertain in his lap. She wasn't wrong that he'd always asked her out in a big, over the top fashion. But it wasn't because he liked making other girls swoon (although that did help assuage the blow to his ego he inevitably received), or because he was trying to put other blokes off her (although he was generally in favor of keeping all other interested parties far away).

Silly as it may have sounded, it would be _harder_to ask her out in private. Calling across the common room, "Hogsmeade tonight, Evans?" on a Thursday night made him look edgy and cool; no one thought about the fact that she was going to tell him to go shag the giant squid instead because he knew how to sneak out to Hogsmeade, and would manage it without getting caught. Her predictable response was a part of the running joke, almost, and he could always claim he'd just been having a laugh, if anyone had confronted him… but they never did. They accepted that he was unabashedly interested in Lily Evans, and that he did not mind being perpetually rejected.

One-on-one, though, she had always made him nervous. His hands got sweaty and he ruffled his hair with every other movement, even more so once he'd learned that she hated it, to his extreme frustration; his heart raced and his breathing accelerated and he'd read about heart attacks in Muggle Studies, and he felt like he was having one when he got near her, sometimes. He knew he would not be able to get a word out if he asked her like that, and when she turned him down—as was inevitable—it would _hurt_ so much more. Because it _wasn't_all just part of a long-standing joke, then, was it? It was real and final if she told him no like that.

He looked around the room again, primarily because he couldn't look at her just now. His face was still hot, and he felt like tears might be burning the back of his eyes, though he'd never admit such a thing, even to himself, if he hadn't known that Sirius was otherwise occupied.

Remus was still talking to Celyn, but Mabyn looked bored now, like she'd realized that trying to protect her sober sister from Remus Lupin had been an exercise in stupidity. Alice and Frank had disappeared, and Indira was rolling her eyes and glancing over her shoulder occasionally at her friend Mary, who was heartily snogging one of the seventh year boys. The boy Indira was only half-listening to was eying her with a mixture of longing and disappointment, as if he wished he could hope his evening would end the same way as their friends' had, but knew better. Peter had finally begun drooling, still sprawled out in front of the girls' staircase.

Peter—and Lily, probably, now that he thought about it—were both going to need Haver's Healing Hangover Helper in the morning, but he was not entirely certain they had enough to spare for the non-Marauding redhead before him. He could always give her his portion, of course… he wasn't drunk, exactly, anymore, but he imagined he'd probably have a headache the next morning all the same. But whereas Peter would stumble, or, failing that, crawl, up to their dorm in the early hours of morning and take some himself, Lily would have no idea, and likely no volition, even if she could remember him making the offer now.

He forced himself to look at her again. Her eyes were closed and her breathing deep, but he didn't think she was asleep yet. He cleared his throat, ruffling his hair again, and watched her eyes slowly open.

"What if… What if I did? Er, ask you out, I mean. Um, in private. Would… would you, ah, think about… y'know… saying yes?"

She let her tired eyes fall closed, her voice sleep-heavy and exaggerated. "No."

He exhaled in a long breath, shaking his head. "No. No, I didn't think so."

He did not examine the crushing feeling in his chest, just then. He was not about to get upset in front of the girl, especially considering her inebriation. Instead he cleared his throat, again, and then once more. "You… you should really get up to bed, Lily."

"Mmm." She said, and he sighed, torn. There was every chance that Mabyn would head to bed without Lily, and while he could get up the girls' staircase fairly easily by himself—though without a broom it required a certain amount of acrobatics—he knew that with Lily it would be nearly impossible. He should really call her over while she was down here, and get her to help Lily up while the redhead was still able to assist in her transport. And while sitting here wasn't making the ache just above his diaphragm any worse, it certainly wasn't helping.

He twirled a finger in her hair again, and let himself believe for a brief moment that things were different—that they had been sitting here talking, cuddled in front of the fire, and that she'd drifted to sleep not out of intoxication, but because she was that reluctant to leave his presence to trudge up to her lonely bed. He let his eyes drift closed while his fingertips slid over her silky curls, and imagined holding her, kissing her forehead, watching her brow crease and her eyelashes flutter while she dreamed.

It was only when the longing became truly unbearable that he forced his eyes open and blinked back his emotion with some embarrassment. He rose to his feet, and cleared his throat as he approached Mabyn. "Hey, Lily's about to pass out on the couch. I'd walk her up to bed, only—"

"The staircase. Right." She sighed and stood, giving one final glance over her shoulder to the boringly platonic conversation Remus and Celyn were having about the Ancient Runes OWL which she was studying for—already—and which Remus had gotten an O on the previous year. James followed behind the strawberry blonde as she made her way over to the couch, gently shook her friend until Lily's eyes fluttered open, and reluctantly coaxed the birthday girl to her feet.

An arm around Lily's shoulders steadied her tired stumbling as they made their way to the stairs together, and slowly began their trek upwards. Once out of sight, James turned back around, intending to wave to Remus to let him know he was heading to bed, before trudging upstairs to wallow in his grief over the evening's developments. He never got the chance.

"—and I would really, really practice translations. Professor Cipher really underestimated how much we would be expected to do, and I know it tripped up a lot of us—" Celyn cut him off by lunging at him, catching his lips in a deep, pressing kiss, and almost bowling him over onto his back with the force of her momentum.

James felt his jaw drop, and watched as Remus pulled back in surprise. "…Where did that come from?" He asked her, and James could have kicked him. Moony had fancied the girl forever; the last thing he ought to do is question it.

She shook her head, her long hair shaking down her back with it, a wild mane of strawberry blonde that was a complete contrast to Mabyn's neat plait. "I've been waiting all night for her to bugger off so I could do this." She told him, breathless and pink-cheeked, but entirely unabashed. Remus' eyes widened, but when she kissed him again, he did not pull back again, but rather let his hands slide up into her hair, holding her face tenderly while he kissed her back.

James chuckled on his way up the stairs to their dormitory, grateful that _someone_ other than Sirius was getting some tonight; he just hoped that Padfoot had remembered a silencing charm this time.


End file.
